Re: Dickens Pictures
Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Mon, 8 Jul 1996 17:42:56 +0100
This is a reply from Mr Dickens to a request from
one of our subscribers, Bill Stewart. Bill had come
across a folder of book illustrations and was asking
for further information about such things.
Tom Holloway
t.holloway@warwick.ac.uk
Secretary to Charles Dickens
---------------------------
My dear Holloway,
Mr Stewart's communication, which you were kind enough to
forward to me, spoke of a phenomenon I know. That is to say,
I am familiar with the class to which it belongs, if not with
the member in question.
During the final decade of the last century, and the first
of this, many wide awake publishers and artists produced
portfolios of etchings, engravings, lithographs, what have you,
representing scenes and characters from my books. Sometimes
the illustrations were newly commissioned, sometimes they
reproduced pictures by artists who had worked with me when
I was writing the books. There was a precedent. Even while I
writing the monthly parts of "Pickwick," cunning artificers were
publishing little folders of illustrations, uncommissioned by me,
to tempt buyers of the parts. Many were tempted. It is still
possible to find copies of my earliest books, bound together from
the monthly parts, with the extra illustrations bound in too,
together with Phiz's or Cruikshank's. The later publishers were
emulating the cunning artificers, in the hope that later buyers
would emulate the earlier ones. The Inimitable's modest cheek reddens,
as he reports that these items are now sought after by collectors.
Needless to say, they are sought after, too, by such noble
establishments as the Dickens House Museum.
Faithfully yours,
Charles Dickens
======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author